Continental Airlines will link two of the world’s leading financial centres tomorrow, March 25.
Shanghai and New York will benefit from Continental’s daily non-stop flights, from its hub at Newark Liberty International Airport. No other US carrier is currently operating on this route.
The airline has had a presence in China since 2001, launching a Hongkong-New York service. It strengthened it foothold further strengthened in 2005 with a Beijing-New York product. Both are also non stop.
Using a Boeing B777-200 aircraft, flight 86 departs at 1545pm, arriving Liberty in the evening of the same day at 1820. The return flight 87 leaves Liberty at 1120, arriving Shanghai at 1545pm. Journey times are approximately 14 hours and 30 minutes in each direction, and flights are timed to coincide with convenient round-trip connections to over 60 other cities across the US and Canada.
Chinese passengers will be amply catered to with inflight announcements, movies, music, instructional videos and menus in Mandarin as well as English, while local Chinese newspapers will be available for BusinessFirst customers.
A Mandarin-speaking attendant will be on hand to translate, and on the ground, Mandarin-speaking agents will assist during check in.
Continental’s new fully lie-flat seats will feature in the premium cabin on this route later this year. Promised are more personal storage space, laptop power, iPod connectivity and a 15.4-inch video monitor providing on-demand movies, music and games.
Continental expects to switch shortly to Star Alliance from Skyteam with integration taking around a year to fulfill.
For more details, visit www.continental.com
Margie T Logarta
